This volume focuses on the Cotswold market town of Chipping Norton and on half a dozen surrounding rural parishes, including Hook Norton and the Rollrights. Drawing on intensive archival research, the authors look in detail at the town's origins, growth, and buildings, and at its economic, social, political, and religious history up to the present day, including its association with the medieval wool trade and the later development of the famous Bliss tweed mill. The surrounding parishes were predominantly agricultural and were reliant on traditional Cotswold sheep-corn farming, although Hook Norton developed significant ironstone quarrying in the 1880s-1940s, and is well known for its still-functioning Victorian brewery. The parishes' wider histories are fully explored, notable features including parks and country houses, the remains (at Swerford) of a motte-and-bailey castle, and the prehistoric Rollright Stones.
